Tracey Emin’s A Second Life at the Tate Modern: beyond the YBA heyday, the artist sings anew

Dora Davies-Evitt | tatler | 26th February 2026

Emin has lived life to excess and then, well, “overshared”. This leads some critics to see weaknesses in a “vast” survey. One suggests, for example, that Emin’s sculptures are not great and her neons belong in hotel foyers. This writer disagrees. Emin takes “the thing [worth saying] and drags it into the public – sex, shame, trauma, abortion – made digestible through aesthetic force and relatability (that messy, unmade bed) … her art is attractive for its lack of euphemism and varnish.”